In order to provide accurate location based information and services to mobile terminal users (subscribers to a cellular communications network), a system must know where every individual subscriber is located at any given time. Whilst this sounds simple, the current architecture of a cellular communications network does not have any central useable knowledge of the location of the mobile terminals. This means that every current solution for pushing location based services to mobile terminals needs to poll the network to gather the needed information.
In the case of a cellular communications network, all location queries are routed through the GMLC (Gateway Mobile Location Centre) which is polled to provide location information derived from the network. Such polling activity to a network resource is acceptable for small scale use, for example business subscribers where the number of subscribers is in the order of thousands. However, for consumer subscribers where there may be 10 million or more subscribers, a location based information provider polling the network for location information on each of those subscribers would overload the mobile network. This polling requirement significantly limits the network population that can have a meaningful location based information push service.
It should be noted that location based services can be provided “on request” as opposed to “push” services but uptake of such request services is poor and little revenue is derived therefrom.